Post #2

"All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace" by Richard Brautigan

Richard Brautigan's poem can be understood as anti-technology due to many unbelievable comparisons. Some of Brautigan's comparisons are: "mammals and computers live together in mutually programming harmony like pure water touching clear sky", "deer stroll peacefully past computers as if they were flowers with spinning blossoms" , "all watched over by machines of loving grace". I read these comparisons as sarcasm. Mammals and computers living together, well that happens, but Brautigans talks about the two in a meadow. Brautigans treats the computer like a living being. He gives the computer human characteristics. When I read this I think of computers with legs, dancing and skipping through the meadow. I believe Brautigan is trying to warn us that if we aren't careful robots are going to be become humanistic and that might cause a problem.

Richard Brautigan's poem can be taken as pro-technology because he writes about computers and humans being friends. Brautigan says, "the sooner the better!" He wants the computers and humans to become friends quickly because he thinks it will be a better place to live in. He then later says, "right now, please!" He says this referring to computers being flowers and deer grazing around them. Brautigan seems to love technology and wants it to become more intertwined with our society.

While I was reading Richard Brautigan's poem I was thinking to myself is this guy serious? I thought he must have been joking. I thought he was trying to poke fun at society and how reliant we are on technology. But then I read about the author and he wrote this when technology was starting to become a bigger role in people's lives. He knew that with the gain of technology, nature would slowly pay the price. Trees were getting cut down. Bigger cities being made. So I believe Brautigan was hoping for a middle ground were both technology and nature could prevail.

Post #1

"Diving into the Wreck" by Adrienne Rich

List of Imagery: book of myths, loaded the camera, checked edge of knife-blade, body armor of black rubber, flippers, awkward mask, sun flooded schooner, here alone, ladder is always there hanging innocently, piece of maritime floss, I go down, Rung after rung, the blue light, the clear atoms, I crawl like an insect down the ladder, first the air is blue and then it is bluer and then green and then black I am blacking out, turn my body without force, swaying their crenellated fans, I stroke the beam of my lamp, the drowned face always staring, the mermaid whose dark hair streams black, the merman in his armored body, obscurely inside barrels half-wedged and left to rot.

I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

This quatrain interprets the poem well because it shows how the diver is on her own and now has to learn how to handle life on her own. Crawling down the ladder with her flippers on, she struggles with the flippers on and with not being able to see when the ocean starts. She is feeling lonely, and worried she won't be remembered and won't be able to find her way around on her own. I think insects tend to move around carefully because they are worried of being squashed, that is why I believe Adrienne Rich chooses this species to describe herself. She is treading softly and is hoping not make a mistake, even though that is not a good way to live your life.